What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite

Image of What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite
Author(s): 
Release Date: 
November 21, 2011
Publisher/Imprint: 
Prometheus Books
Pages: 
309
Reviewed by: 

“The expression ‘knowledge is power’ has never been more appropriate. Mr. DiSalvo takes the mystery out of our daily self-sabotage. Using science and psychology he leads us into awareness and provides us action steps to make our lives better.”

In What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite David DiSalvo wakes us up and sets us free.

The expression “knowledge is power” has never been more appropriate. Mr. DiSalvo takes the mystery out of our daily self-sabotage. Using science and psychology he leads us into awareness and provides us action steps to make our lives better.

The book is fascinating and fast-paced. You feel like you are on a journey of self-discovery with more than one “squirm moment” where he hits a little too close to home. What Makes Your Brain Happy exposes things we all do such as “confirmation bias,” in which we think we are being objective, yet we gravitate only toward information that confirms our existing positions. Mr. DiSalvo opens our eyes to the fact that if we only see what we want to see, we can potentially make decisions that negatively impact our jobs and our relationships.

He also alerts us to the trap many of us find ourselves in of discounting the future—where we agree to a distant commitment to get an immediate positive feeling of being a nice guy, only to find ourselves deeply despondent when the due date finally rolls around. By illuminating our brain’s desire for short-term gain, author DiSalvo helps us achieve our long-term goals.

What Makes Your Brain Happy integrates sophisticated concepts of neurology into simple examples of what we do in everyday life. It helps us understand ourselves by drawing on research about evolution. With the information Mr. DiSalvo provides, we can see how we have been living reactively instead of proactively. And after he opens our awareness up to what we blindly do he tells us how to stop. He offers 50 specific “knowledge clues” drawn from his research and discussed throughout the book.

If you have no interest in changing and think you are doing everything perfectly, you should be the first in line to read What Makes Your Brain Happy.